Blog

Today I finally signed the sale and purchase agreement for Anyara. Now to arrange the first 10% payment.

Together with this I get 4 acres of Mao Shan Wang durian planation which is already in its 5th year of growth. I am waiting for the 4.2 km link road that will cut down the travelling time to KLCC to 25 minutes. That will take about 18 months. The facilities will take about 24 months to build. I need to build the house within 5 years.

Will meet up with designers and architects to get some ideas next year. Anyway in no hurry as I want others to start building. Good to see who they use and what their designs are.

Will be fun. Also found out that my house number will be 7. Nice single digit!

This morning I drove up to KL. Started off at 515am with a 100% charge. Both Tuas and Malaysia checkpoints were a breeze. No traffic at all. Strangely by the time I was clearing Malaysia immigration, my charge was down to 91%. I thought it weird that it came off so quickly for the first 10%. Still as I was driving, it showed that I would reach KLCC with a15% charge remaining.

Anyway as it was still very early, I stopped at Ayer Keroh and charged the car for 15 minutes, which brought the charge up to 80%. I had a long black at Starbucks, which opened at 8am, while waiting for the quick charge. The service at Starbucks was superb.

Arrived in KL at 10am. Morning traffic.

I had lunch at the Good Earth Restaurant yesterday. It was with my colleague and her mum.

I first my mum’s colleague earlier this year at an Indian function. She had asked to see me through a friend and she came up to greet me at that dinner.

So I have been talking to my colleague about a lunch for some time and we decided to have it here as both of them are vegetarians. We spent all our time talking about technology and in particular AI, and how it will eventually disrupt work and may cause unemployment. I suppose it was a pertinent conversation as my colleague is very young.

We had a lovely time and the food was good. I have never eaten here but I remember getting take away food from here during Covid.

So it looks like it might finally happen. The meeting between Trump and Zelensky this morning went well. Much better than the February meeting. And they have agreed to direct talks between Ukraine and Russia and to a three party meeting with the US thereafter.

Nearly 4 years of war and so much hardship and suffering for Ukraine. I hope a peace deal happens soon. It will bring stability to Europe and another major flashpoint in the world would have been resolved. The sanctions on Russia will be lifted and it will be free to sell its oil and gas in the open market. Ukraine will start its rebuilding its country and economy. There is tremendous opportunity for growth in that country and many people will now rush in to invest there. Their exports of grains can resume. Ukraine has shown tremendous resilience and innovation and the many countries would want to learn from them and buy their know how and military products, especially their drones.

I messaged the Ukrainian Ambassador to send her my best wishes and hopes for a speedy resolution and she similarly is hopeful of a good outcome soon.

If this happens, much as I am surprised to say this and I never thought I would, I do think Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. He would have achieved by clever tactical moves and appropriate pressure on all parties an outcome that none of the other European and US leaders managed to achieve. So let’s see…fingers crossed

This evening I attended the National Day Rally at ITE.

I like attending these rallies as I enjoy hearing the speech by the PM and meeting many of my friends there.

I was here last year and I remember specifically asking to attend as that was the first National Day Rally speech by our new PM. He did well then.

This time he no longer felt the pressure of an election. He had obtained a clear mandate and he spoke with confidence. It showed that he has been been meeting up with many groups of people and listened to them, finding out their needs. He identified 5 areas to touch on and each area was identified carefully and he had a clear vision for each one of these areas. I was actually looking forward to what he had to say on each areas. I left feeling very inspired. And I think Singapore is in good strong hands and the future is for us to make it what we want it to be as Singaporeans.

I had signed up for this PA organized course some time back and it was yesterday.

This was held at NACLI at South Buona Vista Road. This place is now the training arm of PA.

As I arrived here, I remembered that I had come here years ago when I was just a first year student at NUS to attend a camp. That was in 1982. Then it was called the National Youth Leadership Training Institute. I had to attend a one week residential camp together with about 30 others who all had been awarded PSC scholarships that year. I had completely forgotten about this camp I attended until I arrived here. I cannot remember anything else about the program or the people who attended that event. I only remember that the course director was a unsmiling and strict Chinese gentleman. In the first session, he walked in and asked us when Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. None of us knew the answer and we were chided. Till today, I still remember that it was 15 February 1942.

The course yesterday was attended by 22 people and it was from 9am till 4 pm. All the attendees were grassroot leaders. A simple program and I did learn something but ultimately Emotional Intelligence is something one has to work at consciously and continually. Let’s see.

This morning was the launch of this new program by all the 5 CDCs. Each CDC has identified a walking trail within their CDC and embedded parts of the trail with digital components, much like the Pokemon craze.

The launch was at 730am but I was there by 645am. The launch was at the Assumption Pathway School. I have never been here but as I was driving in early in the morning in semi darkness, I noticed that the campus is huge. Then I learnt that is is part of the St Gabriel’s foundation and it comprises 3 campuses in one location, including Boys Town. I was impressed with the cleanliness and the speciousness of the campus.

It was a simple launch and the walk was 5.3 km this morning which I couldn’t undertake because of a course I was taking this morning starting at 9am.

The GOH for the event was Min Edwin Tong and all the 5 Mayors were present. I was told that this was the first event after the GE where all of them have been present at a CDC event.

Today was one of the flagship events of our Lifelong learning Committee at the NWCDC. We decided that we should do an event for SMEs and we chose the topic of Enterprise Transformation; Growth with AI and Digitalization. We did it as a half day event and we had more than 400 participants attending today.

AI is growing in importance daily and companies that do nothing are going to be left behind and will disappear. So we had experts come in and talk about what AI is out there, what AI can do for companies and some real life case examples of how AI helped transform the business outlook for these companies.

I learnt so much. Certainly if I am a business owner, I will be worried with what is out there. But it is good to know that there is help available and resources available.

I had lunch today with Vikram. We have been planning a meal for some time and it finally materialized today.

He had suggested a French place at Duxton or a Pernakan place at the Esplanade. I picked the Straits Chinese at the Esplanade. It’s nearer and French food can be a bit too much.

We spoke about so many things. The elections, the firm, people we know and his family.

I know his father and mother in law well as I have done work for them and I recall speaking to him many years ago to encourage him to join Rajah and Tann, which he did.

The food was decent and the place is nice, but as is the case with all Pernakan food, the rendang can make one feel bloated.

Breakfast this morning was with the former Mayor and the 2 former GMs of NWCDC.

I first became involved in community work at the NWCDC sometime in 2003. I must confess I was lost when I first started. Didn’t know anything about all the grassroot organisations and their structure.

The Mayor then was Dr Teo. I began working on the Cohesion magazine and the manager in charge of this project then was Crystal Teng, who later became the GM.

After Crystal left the CDC to join PA, Mei Ling became the GM. She left at the start of Covid to also join PA.

These are wonderful people I have worked with at the CDC. Thanks to them for encouraging me and supporting me all these years.

Breakfast was at La Lavain at Hamilton Road.